Members of the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Committee of Anambra State Anti-Corruption Strategy, have been urged to own the on-going anti-corruption campaign across Ministries Departments and agencies (MDAs).
This will ensure that the campaign outlives the lifespan of the Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption (RoLAC) programme, which is currently implementing it.
The RoLAC Lead Consultant Prof Ada Chidi-Igbokwe made the call during a two-day capacity building training for the M&E committee members.
RoLAC 2 programme is funded by the European Union and implemented by International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA).
Ada-Igbokwe lamented that several similar programmes have died immediately at the expiration of the project circle bankrolled by international organizations.
“It is regrettable that many lofty programmes in the past died immediately the foreign organizations sponsoring them withdrew funding.
“I am really concerned about sustainability of this programme because if not that RoLAC 2 came, all that was done during RoLAC 1 would have been wasted.
“M&E committee members only visited the MDAs once during the baseline survey. They never went back”.
She charged the M&E committee members to regularly monitor government operations to ensure accountability transparency and quality service delivery.
“If you are inactive, the implementation will be flawed. So, get to work immediately you are deployed to various MDAs.
“Anti-corruption committees ACCs in the MDAs will be effective only if you effectively discharge your oversight duty.
Data is critical
Data is critical
In a presentation, another Consultant, Prof. Onyiukwu Onyiukwu, described accurate data as critical in measuring success or failure of ANSACS implementation.
“If you cannot recognize failure, you cannot correct it. If you cannot see success you cannot learn from it.
“If you can’t demonstrate results, you can’t win public support. Whether monitoring or evaluation, data is central” he noted.
According to Prof Onyiukwu, data is best collected routinely and not through survey as the case is in the country.
“Every unit of government should be a data collection point. Unfortunately, our government delivers services without keeping data.
“So, whenever we need data, we resort to survey because we have failed fundamentally to collect data.
“In other climes, every unit of government collects data on routine basis and it helps a lot”.
“M&E is a veritable tool of performance measurement and tracking.
“The scorecard for tracking performance results run on timely generation and analysis of relevant data.
The highly interactive training session the ANSACS M&E committee members the opportunity to seek clarifications about their roles and how best to discharge their duties.
